The first progress report of 2009 is a joyous one! The progress I’m here to report on the quilt top for “Nest” is that… drumroll please… it’s finished! Woo-hoo!

I completed the last long seam last night and pressed it this morning. I’m over the moon with happiness for how it turned out. It went up so much faster than I was expecting — I started cutting the fabric on December 21st or so — and it was so much fun to sew up. The pattern (which can be downloaded for free here ) was a nice mix of short easy seams and slightly longer, more involved seams, and offered just the right amount of getting to use fun new fabrics frequently. I think the pattern does a great job of show casing really awesome prints; in this case, I used fabrics from the Flutterby line, designed by Tula Pink.

The next step is to call the quilter to make arrangements to have it quilted. Then once it comes back from her, I’ll have to bind it. So really, it’s far from finished, but the first big step is done. I cannot get over how much fun piecing a quilt is. I love that I start with an orderly stack of little pieces of fabric, and then slowly put them together, until finally I have a whole quilt in my lap!

The quilt has already gotten the thumbs up from the member of the household who will probably use it the most:

Rollie highly approves! (Whenever Rollie starts acting a little funny, we like to joke that she’s been taken over by a pod kitty. If you look closely at the brown accent triangle by her foot, you’ll see the print is meant to be little green ladybugs, to fit into the Flutterby insect theme. For some reason, when I first saw the fabric, instead of seeing ladybugs, I saw robo-cats. The ladybugs’ antennae looked like cat ears to me, and their spots looked like cat eyes. Clearly, the print depicts pod kitties, which is probably why Rollie loves it so. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d like me to stop calling it “Nest” and start calling it “Pod Kitty”.)